Sally Coleman. Sally was the first to submit the correct answer to our January trivia question: "What was Gilligan's (of Gilligan's Island) first name? " The correct answer is "Willie."

My father always starts saying after New Year's has past, "We are one more day closer to spring." This winter with all the snow and cold we have had so far those are words that are encouraging. One more thing I find encouraging is looking at seed packets and planning and dreaming about my garden under all that snow.

I always seem to start with the vegetable garden. Nothing tastes as good as fresh greens from your own garden or container gardens. Here are two new offerings this season: Dutch Darkibor Kale has curly, rich green color with mild, juicy-sweet tender leaves. Kale is a vitamin-rich addition to any dish. Kale also makes a great plant to incorporate into the landscape with its striking foliage. Ella Kropf Lettuce produces tender softball sized heads of round leaves with a pleasant sweet flavor. This variety passed down by the Kropf family since 1930 before being introduced for sale to the public in 2005.

Not having a large vegetable garden I am always looking for space saving varieties that can be grown in containers or raised beds. Honey Nut Baby Butternut Squash offers personal sized squash that turns orange at harvest time with a rich delicious sweet flavor on mildew resistant plants that can climb a fence or trellis. This squash is easy to cook and stores well. Blue Jade Corn grows to 3 feet tall making it perfect for growing in containers. Each plant produces 3-6 ears with sweet, steel-blue kernels that turn jade-blue when boiled. Red Burgundy Okra produces deep crimson-red, 6 inch long pods and the tall stems are adorned with gorgeous yellow flowers accented by red centers. These tender pods are delicious in soup, gumbo, and stew or fried. The red color does fade during cooking but not the flavor. Whether you eat okra or not, this plant is worth growing!

1. In the U.S., Americans eat about 18 acres of pizza a day.

3. An olive tree can live up to 1500 years.

Wedel's News

Questions often arise about the effect of wind chill on plants. When it is appropriate, forecasters warn us about the dangerous combination of low temperatures and wind saying that the combination of the 2 can cause severe damage in a relatively short length of time. We've heard those warnings recently and not for the last time this year, I'm sure.

If you've needed to be outside recently, if for no longer than to walk to the mailbox, into the grocery store or from your car to your job, you have a sense of how cold it can feel no matter the reading on the thermometer. It isn't pleasant and can be quite painful. But, what is it like for our gardens and landscape during those frigid hours?

Plants need moisture to survive any time of the year and strong winds cause dessication or drying of plant tissue. That is especially true for evergreens since they don't drop their leaves and for younger or smaller sized wood or twigs on young plants or the new growth of older plants. The damage done by winter winds is called winter kill and is often recognizable by its effect on only 1 side of a plant, the side toward which the winter winds blow.

Wedel's recommends a late watering for your landscape plants, even after Thanksgiving, to help ensure they get through the winter as well hydrated as possible.

Plants acclimated to our area will withstand cold temperatures but there are some "ifs." If very cold temperatures arrive before plants have had time to enter dormancy then they can or will suffer damage. If cold temperatures arrive after plants have begun to awaken from dormancy and if those temperatures are low enough and remain long enough, plants will suffer damage.

What might not seem to make a lot of sense is wind chill has no effect on plants. While wind or chill can damage plants, the combination of the two is not more damaging than either alone. There is no difference to a plant if the temperature is 25 below zero or 55 below zero except for the difference in the drying effect of the wind at a higher wind speed.